A rent-charge may be discharged in various ways. If a man who has a rent-charge out of certain lands buys any part of them, the whole • rent is discharged, for it issues out of the whole of the lands ; and the consequence is the same if he releases all his right in any part of the land. But a man may release part of the rent-charge without affecting the remainder ; and a division or apportionment of a rent by conveying part of it to a stranger is a valid conveyance. If part of the lands which are subject to the rent-charge descend to the grantee, the rent will be apportioned according to the respective value of the two parts of the land.
A rent-seek, as already mentioned, is not, like rent-service, accompanied with a right to distrain at common law ; but by the stat. 4 Geo. II. c. 29, s. f), this distinction in respect of remedy between rent-service and rent-seek is abolished ; and the Act also applies to rent-seek created prior to the statute which had been duly paid for three years out of the last twenty years. Other rents, though they belong to one of the three divisions above mentioned, are often distinguished by particular names : thus the rent due from a free holder is called a chief rent (redditua eapitalis); the rents of free holders and ancient copyholders of manors are sometimes called rents of assise, being assist, or ascertained, and also quit-rents (quieti redditus), because they are a quittance and discharge of all services. ' A fee-farm rent is properly a perpetual rent-service reserved by the crown, or, before the Statute of Quia Emptores, by a subject, upon a grant in fee simple. The purchaser of fee-farm rents originally reserved to the crown, but sold under 22 Car. II. c. 6, has the same power of distress that the king had, and so may distrain on other land of the tenant not subject to the rent.
By the shat. 42 Gco. III. c. 116, in cases where the land-tax has not been redeemed in duo time by the owner of the land, it may be purchased by any other person, to whom it will belong as a perpetual rent-charge (though it is called a fee-farm rent in the Act), and the purchaser will have all the remedies for rent reserved on a lease.
By the stat. 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 27, a. 42, ne arrears of rent.or of interest in respect of any sum of money charged upon or payable out of land or rent, or any damages in respect of such arrears of rent or interest, shall be recovered by any distress, suit, or action, but within six years next after the same respectively shall have become due, or some acknowledgment in writing given to the person entitled thereto by the person by whom the same was payable ; except where there has been a prior mortgagee or other incumbrancer in possessiou of any land or receipt of the profits thereof within one year next before an action or suit shall be brought by a subsequent mortgagee, &c.; and
then the arrears of interest may be recovered for the whole time such prior mortgagee, &c., was in such possession or receipt.
ItEl'EATING CIRCLE. The principle of repetition from which this circle has its name was first explained by Tobias Mayer, professor of the university of Gottingen, in Commentarii Societatis Regis; Scicntiarum Gottingensis,'Som. p. 325, for the year 1752. Mayer found that the common surveying instruments were often inaccurate to 5, while the quadrant, then used in all great scientific surveys, was, from its weight and price, and the trouble required for verifying and adjusting it, scarcely to be considered a portable instrument, but only fit for the observatory. The substitute which he proposed for gee deeical purposes may be described briefly as follows :— Suppose a hollow tnbe fitting upon an axis, to which it can be clamped, when required, by a screw; the axis itself is fixed on the top of a staff. This part of the instrument is exactly similar to a common mounting for surveying compasses, &c., where greater stability is wanted than a ball and socket will give. On the top of the tube a flat bar its screwed, the plane of which is horizontal when the tube and axis are vertical; the bar and tube thus form one piece, which has the sieve of a T. A second bar of the same length is placed exactly above the former.
This latter bar moves easily, and without shake, on a pin concentric with the tube and axis, and thus can be placed at any angle with the fixed rule, and, as it is supposed, without at all disturbing it. Two fine dote are pricked towards the ends of each bar ; the lines joining the dots in each should pass exactly through the axis of motion of the upper bar, and the dots must be equidistant from the centre. When this is so, the four dots will, in every position of the bars, be the angular points of a rectangle, and the equality of the opposite sides can be ascertained by measuring the distance with compasses. Finally, on the top of the upper bar a telescope with cross wires is fixed, the telescope being a little shorter than the bar, that it may. not interfere with measurements between the dots.